Chapter XIV: The Majority Socialists in Control

The Independent Socialist trio in the cabinet had been compelled to give up--at least outwardly--their opposition to the summoning of a national assembly. Popular sentiment too plainly demanded such a congress to make it possible to resist the demand. Also the Majority members of the cabinet had been strengthened by two occurrences early in December. Joffe, the former Russian Bolshevik ambassador, had published his charges against Haase, Barth and Cohn, and, although these were merely a confirmation of what was generally suspected or even definitely known by many, they had an ugly look in the black and white of a printed page and found a temporary reaction which visibly shook the authority of these men who had accepted foreign funds to overthrow their government.

The other factor strengthening the hands of Ebert, Scheidemann and Landsberg was the manner of the return of the German front-soldiers.

Gratifying reports had come of the conduct of these men on their homeward march. Where the soldiers of the _etappe_ had thrown discipline and honor to the winds and straggled home, a chaotic collection of looters, the men who, until noon on November 11th, had kept up the unequal struggle against victorious armies, brought back with them some of the spirit that kept them at their hopeless posts. They marched in good order, singing the old songs, and scores of reports came of rough treatment meted out by them to misguided _Genossen_ who tried to compel them to substitute the red flag for their national or state flags, or for their regimental banners.

The first returning soldiers poured through the Brandenburger Tor on December 10th. A victorious army could not have comported itself differently. The imperial black-white-red, the black-and-white of Prussia, the white-and-blue of Bavaria and the flags of other states floated from the ranks of the veterans. Flowers decked their helmets. Flowers and evergreens covered gun-carriages and caissons, flowers peeped from the muzzles of the rifles. Women, children and old men trudged alongside, cheering, laughing, weeping. Time was for the moment rolled back. It was not December, 1918, but August, 1914.

The people greeted the troops as if they were a conquering army. They jammed the broad Unter den Linden; cheering and handclapping were almost continuous. The red flags had disappeared from the buildings along the street and been replaced by the imperial or Prussian colors. Only the _Kultusministerium_, presided over by Adolph Hoffmann, illiterate director of schools and atheistic master of churches, stayed red. The flag of revolution floated over it and a huge red carpet hung challengingly from a second-story window.

It was evident on this first day, as also on the following days, that red doctrines had not yet destroyed discipline and order. The men marched with the cadenced step of veterans, their ranks were correctly aligned, their rifles snapped from hand to shoulder at the command of their officers. The bands blared national songs as the long lines of field-gray troops defiled through the central arch of the great gate, once sacredly reserved for the royal family.

A hush fell on the waiting crowds. The soldiers' helmets came off. A massed band played softly and a chorus of school-children sang the old German anthem:

_Wie sie so sanft ruh'n,
Alle die Seligen,
In ihren Graebern._

Ebert delivered the address of welcome, which was followed by three cheers for "the German Republic." It was no time for cheers for the "German Socialist Republic." The soldiers had not yet been "enlightened."

The scenes of this first day were repeated on each day of the week. The self-respecting, sound attitude of the front-soldiers angered the Spartacans and Independents, but was hailed with delight by the great majority of the people. The _Vollzugsrat_, resenting the fact that it had not been asked, as the real governing body of Germany, to take part officially in welcoming the soldiers, sent one of its members to deliver an address of welcome. He had hardly started when bands began to play, officers shouted out commands, the men's rifles sprang to their shoulders and they marched away, leaving him talking to an empty square.

The six-man cabinet announced that a national assembly would be convened. The date tentatively fixed for the elections was February 2d, which was a compromise, for the Majority Socialists wanted an earlier date, while the Independent trio desired April. It was announced also that a central congress of all Germany's workmen's and soldiers' councils had been summoned to meet in Berlin on December 16th. This congress was to have power to fix the date for the national assembly and to make the necessary preparations.

No definite rules were laid down covering the manner of choosing delegates to the congress. Despite the consequent possibility that the elections of delegates would be manipulated by the less scrupulous Spartacans and Independents, the congress chosen was a remarkably representative body. The numerical weakness of the two radical wings of Socialism found striking illustration in the makeup of the congress. Of its total membership of some four hundred and fifty, the Spartacans and Independents together had only about forty delegates. That this accurately represented the proportionate strengths of the conservative and the radical camps was proved at the elections for the national assembly a month later, when the Independents, with four per cent of the total popular vote, again had one-eleventh of the Majority Socialists' forty-four per cent. In considering the role played by the radicals in the second phase of the revolution it must be remembered that the majority of their strength lay in Berlin, where they eventually won a greater following than that of the old party. If Berlin and the free cities of Hamburg and Bremen could have been isolated from the empire and allowed to go their own way, ordered government in Germany would have come months sooner.[56]

[56] It is not merely in very recent times that the largest
cities have become the strongholds of radicalism. In a
session of the Prussian Diet on March 20, 1852, a deputy
charged the government with lack of confidence in the people.
Bismarck replied: "The deputy having declared here that the
government distrusts the people, I can say to him that it is
true that I distrust the inhabitants of the larger cities so
long as they let themselves be led by self-seeking and lying
demagogues, but that I do not find the real people there. If
the larger cities rise up again in rebellion, the real people
will have ways of bringing them to obedience, even if these
must include wiping them off the face of the earth."

The following account of the sessions of the central congress is copied from the author's diary of those days. There is nothing to add to or take from the estimates and comments set down at that time.

"December 16th. The Central Congress of Germany's Workmen's and
Soldiers' Councils convened today in the _Abgeordnetenhaus_
(Prussian Diet). There are about four hundred and fifty
delegates present, including two women. There is a fair
sprinkling of intelligent faces in the crowd, and the average of
intelligence and manners is far above that of the Berlin
Soldiers' Council. None of the delegates keeps his hat on in the
chamber and a few who have started smoking throw their cigars
and cigarettes away at the request of the presiding officer,
Leinert from Hanover, who was for some years a member of the
Prussian Diet and is a man of ability and some parliamentary
training.

"After organization, which is effected with a show of
parliamentary form, Richard Mueller, chairman of the executive
committee of the _Vollzugsrat_, mounts the speaker's tribune to
give an extended report of the committee's activities. The
report, which turns out to be really a defense of the committee,
gets a cool reception. The _Vollzugsrat_ has drifted steadily to
the left ever since it was appointed, and is strongly
Independent Socialist and Spartacan, and it is already evident
that the Majority Socialists have an overwhelming majority in
the Congress.

"Chairman Leinert interrupts Mueller's speech with an
announcement that a _Genosse_ has an important communication to
make. A man who declares that he speaks 'in the name of at least
250,000 of Berlin's proletariat, now assembled before this
building,' reads a series of demands. The first, calling for the
strengthening of the socialist republic, is greeted with general
applause, but then come the familiar Spartacan (Bolshevik)
demands for the disarming of the _bourgeoisie_, weaponing of
'the revolutionary proletariat,' formation of a Red Guard (loud
cries of 'No!'), and 'all power to remain in the hands of the
workmen's and soldiers' councils.' In other words, the Russian
Soviet republic.

"A half dozen officer-delegates present join in the protests
against the demands. Loud cries of '_raus die Offiziere!_' (out
with the officers!) come from a little group of Spartacans and
Independent Socialists at the right of the room. Order is
finally restored and Mueller completes his defense of the
_Vollzugsrat_.

"A delegate moves that 'Comrades Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
be invited to attend the session as guests with advisory powers,
in view of their great services to the revolution.'[57] The
motion is voted down, five to one. It is renewed in the
afternoon, but meets the same fate, after a turbulent scene in
which the Spartacans and their Independent Socialist allies howl
and shout insults at the top of their voices.

[57] Neither Liebknecht nor Luxemburg had been chosen as
delegate, although desperate efforts were made to have
them elected.

"Liebknecht, who has entered the building while this was going
on, addresses his followers in the street in front from the
ledge of a third-story window. The '250,000 of Berlin's
proletariat' prove to be about seven thousand, nearly half of
them women and girls and a great majority of the rest
down-at-the-heels youths. His speech is the usual Bolshevik
rodomontade. A middle-aged workman who leaves the crowd with me
tells me:

"'Two-thirds of the people there are there because they
have to come or lose their jobs. One has to eat, you know.'

"I learned later in the day that many of the paraders had been
induced to attend by the representation that it was to be a
demonstration in favor of the national assembly. It is also
asserted that others were forced by Spartacans with drawn
revolvers to leave their factories.

"December 17th. The second day's session of the Congress was
marked by a virulent attack on Ebert by Ledebour, between whom
and Liebknecht there is little difference. The reception of his
speech by the delegates again demonstrated that the Majority
Socialists make up nine-tenths of the assembly. Barth also took
it upon himself to attack Ebert and to disclose secrets of the
inner workings of the cabinet. Ebert answered with an indignant
protest against being thus attacked from the rear. Barth has the
lowest mentality of all the six cabinet members, and I am
informed on good authority that he has an unsavory record. His
alleged offenses are of a nature regarded by advanced
penologists as pathological rather than criminal, but however
that may be, he seems hardly fitted for participation in any
governing body.

"Liebknecht's followers staged another demonstration like that
of yesterday. The Congress had decided that no outsiders should
be permitted again to interrupt the proceedings, but a
delegation of some forty men and women from the Schwarzkopff,
Knorr and other red factories, bearing banners inscribed with
Bolshevik demands, insisted on entering and nobody dared oppose
them. They filed onto the platform and read their stock
resolutions, cheered by the little group of their soul-brothers
among the deputies and by fanatics in the public galleries.
Beyond temporarily interrupting the proceedings of the Congress
they accomplished nothing.

"The incompetence--to use no stronger word--of the _Vollzugsrat_
was again demonstrated today, as well as its careless financial
methods.

"December 18th. A well-dressed German who stands beside me in
the diplomatic gallery insists on explaining to all occupants of
the gallery that it is intolerable that the speaker now in the
tribune should be permitted to speak of the late 'revolt.' 'It
was not a revolt; it was a revolution, and they ought to compel
him to call it that,' he says. How typical of the mentality of a
great number of the delegates themselves! They have spent
precious hours discussing Marx and Bebel and the brotherhood of
man--which, however, appears to extend only to the
proletariat--but only two or three clear heads have talked of
practical things. The failure of the Socialists generally to
realize that it is not now a question of doing what they would
like to do, but what they must do, is extraordinary and amazing.
One speaker has read nearly a chapter from one of Bebel's books.
Only a few leaders are clear-sighted enough to insist that it is
more important just now to save Germany from disintegration and
the German people from starvation than to impose the doctrines
of internationalism upon a world not yet ready for them. The
members of the average high school debating club in any American
city have a keener sense for practical questions than has the
great majority of this Congress.[58]

[58] This may appear to be an extravagant comparison, but it
is so near the truth that I let it stand.

"December 19th. The Congress tonight changed the date for the
National Assembly from February 16th to January 19th. Hardly
forty of the delegates opposed the change. These
forty--Independents and Spartacans--tried vainly to have a
resolution passed committing Germany to the Russian Soviet
system, but the vast majority would have none of it. Haase spoke
in favor of the National Assembly. If he maintains this course
his cooperation with the three Majority members of the cabinet
will be valuable, but he is a trimmer and undependable.

"The Congress was enabled by a bolt of the Independents to
accomplish another valuable bit of work, viz., the appointment
of a new central _Vollzugsrat_ made up entirely of Majority
Socialists. It includes some excellent men, notably Cohen of
Reuss, whose speech in advocacy of the National Assembly and of
changing its date has been the most logical and irrefutable
speech made during the Congress, and Leinert, first chairman of
the Congress. With the support of this new executive committee
the cabinet will have no excuse if it continues to shilly-shally
along and fails to exhibit some backbone.

"But I am apprehensive. A scraggly-bearded fanatic in one of the
public galleries today repeatedly howled insults at Majority
Socialist speakers, and, although repeated remonstrances were
made, nobody had enough energy or courage to throw him out.
Leinert once threatened to clear the galleries if the
demonstrations there were repeated. The spectators promptly
responded with hoots, hisses and the shaking of fists, but the
galleries were not cleared.

"German government in miniature! The same mentality that places
guards before public buildings and orders them not to use their
weapons! _Sancta simplicitas!_"

It will be observed that the foregoing report, comparatively lengthy though it is, fails to record an amount of legislative business commensurate with the length of the session. And yet there is little to add to it, for but two things of importance were done--the alteration of the date for holding the elections for the National Assembly and the appointment of the new _Vollzugsrat_. Outside this the accomplishments of the Congress were mainly along the line of refusing to yield to Independent and Spartacan pressure designed to anchor the soviet scheme in the government. New light is thrown on the old _Vollzugsrat_ by the fact that it had invited the Russian Government to send delegates to the Congress. The cabinet had learned of this in time, and a week before the Congress was to assemble it sent a wireless message to Petrograd, asking the government to abstain from sending delegates "in view of the present situation in Germany." The Russians nevertheless tried to come, but were stopped at the frontier.

The manner in which Haase and Dittmann had supported their Majority Socialist colleagues in the cabinet by their speeches during the Congress had demonstrated that, while there were differences between the two groups, they were not insurmountable. The events of the week following the Congress of Soviets, however, altered the situation completely.

It has been related how, in the days preceding the actual revolution in Berlin, the so-called "People's Marine Division" had been summoned to the capital to protect the government. It was quartered in the Royal Stables and the Royal Palace, and was entrusted with the custody of the Palace and its treasures.

It speedily became apparent that a wolf had been placed in charge of the sheepfold. The division, which had originally consisted of slightly more than six hundred men, gradually swelled to more than three thousand, despite the fact that no recruiting for it nor increase in its numbers had been authorized. A great part of the men performed no service whatever, terrorized inoffending people, and, as investigation by the Finance Ministry disclosed, stole everything movable in the Palace.

The division demanded that it be permitted to increase its numbers to five thousand and that it be made a part of the Republican Soldier Guard in charge of the city's police service. This demand was refused by the City Commandant, Otto Wels, since the ranks of the Soldier Guard were already full. A compromise was eventually reached by which those of the division who had formerly been employed on police duty and who were fathers of families and residents of Berlin, would be added to the police force if the Marine Division would surrender the keys to the Palace which it was looting. The Marines agreed to this, but failed to surrender the keys. On December 21st a payment of eighty thousand marks was to be made to them for their supposed services. Wels refused to hand over the money until the keys to the Palace had been surrendered.

Wels had incurred the deep hatred of the more radical elements of the capital by his sturdy opposition to lawlessness. He was almost the only Majority Socialist functionary who had displayed unbending energy in his efforts to uphold the authority of the government, and public demonstrations against him had already been held, in which he was classed with Ebert and Scheidemann as a "bloodhound." The leaders of the Marine Division decided reluctantly to give up the Palace keys, but they would not hand them over to the hated Wels. Early in the afternoon of December 23d they sought out Barth, the member of the cabinet who stood closest to them, and gave the keys to him. Barth telephoned to Wels that the keys had been surrendered. Wels pointed out that Ebert was the member of the cabinet in charge of military affairs, and declared that he would pay out the eighty thousand marks only upon receipt of advices that the keys were in Ebert's possession.

The delivery to Barth of the keys had been entrusted two marines who constituted the military post at the Chancellor's Palace. These men, informed of Wels's attitude, occupied the telephone central in the palace, and informed Ebert and Landsberg that Dorrenbach, their commander, had ordered that no one be permitted to leave or enter the building. An hour later, at five-thirty o'clock, the Marines left the building, but in the evening the whole division appeared before the palace and occupied it.

Government troops, summoned by telephone, also appeared, and an armed clash appeared imminent. Ebert, however, finally induced the Marines to leave on condition that the government troops also left.

While this was going on, a detachment of Marines had entered Wels's office, compelled him at the point of their guns to pay out the eighty thousand marks due them, and had then marched him to the Royal Stables, where he was locked up in a cellar and threatened with death. Ebert, Scheidemann and Landsberg, without consulting their colleagues, ordered the Minister of War to employ all force necessary for the release of Wels. At the last moment, however, negotiations were entered into and Wels was released shortly after midnight on the Marines' terms.

Spartacans and radical Independents took the part of the Marines. Richard Mueller, Ledebour, Daeumig and other members of the defunct original _Vollzugsrat_ were galvanized into new opposition. Ledebour's "Revolutionary Foremen of Greater Berlin Industries" demanded the retirement of the Independent Socialist members of the cabinet, and the demand was approvingly published by _Die Freiheit_, the party's official organ. The head and forefront of the Majority cabinet members' offending was their order to the War Minister to use force in upholding the government's authority, and radical revolutionists condemn force when it is employed against themselves.

The position of Haase and Dittmann as party leaders was seriously shaken. The left wing of their party, led by Eichhorn and Ledebour, was on the point of disavowing them as leaders and even as members of the party. At the party's caucuses in Greater Berlin on December 26th, held to nominate candidates for delegates to the coming National Assembly, Ledebour refused to permit his name to be printed on the same ticket with Haase's, and Eichhorn secured 326 votes to 271 for the party's head.

On the evening of the same day the Independents in the cabinet submitted eight formulated questions to the _Vollzugsrat_, in which this body was asked to define its attitude as to various matters. The _Vollzugsrat_ answered a majority of the questions in a sense favorable to the Independents. Its answer to one important question, however, gave the Independents the pretext for which they were looking. The question ran:

"Does the _Vollzugsrat_ approve that the cabinet members Ebert,
Scheidemann and Lansberg on the night of December 23d conferred
upon the Minister of War the authority, in no manner limited, to
employ military force against the People's Marine Division in
the Palace and Stables?"

The executive council's answer was:

"The people's commissioners merely gave the order to do what was
necessary to liberate Comrade Wels. Nor was this done until
after the three commissioners had been advised by telephone by
the leader of the People's Marine Division that he could not
longer guarantee the life of Comrade Wels. The _Vollzugsrat_
approves."

The _Vollzugsrat_ itself presented a question. It asked:

"Are the People's Commissioners prepared to protect public order
and safety, and also and especially private and public property,
against forcible attacks? Are they also prepared to use the
powers at their disposal to prevent themselves and their organs
from being interfered with in their conduct of public affairs by
acts of violence, irrespective of whence these may come?"

The Independents, for whom Dittmann spoke, hereupon declared that they retired from the government. Thus they avoided the necessity of answering the _Vollzugsrat's_ question. In a subsequent statement published in their press the trio declared that the Majority members were encouraging counter-revolution by refusing to check the power of the military. They themselves, they asserted, were a short while earlier in a position to take over the government alone, but they could not do so since their principles did not permit them to work with a Majority Socialist _Vollzugsrat_. What they meant by saying that they could have assumed complete control of the cabinet was not explained, and it was probably an over-optimistic statement. There is no reason to believe that the Independents had up to this time been in a position enabling them to throw the Majority Socialists out of the cabinet.

Ebert, Scheidemann and Landsberg, in a manifesto to the people, declared that the Independents had, by their resignations, refused to take a stand in favor of assuring the safety of the state. The manifesto said:

"By rejecting the means of assuring the state's safety, the
Independents have demonstrated their incapacity to govern. For
us the revolution is not a party watchword, but the most
valuable possession of the whole wealth-producing folk.

"We take over their tasks as people's commissioners with the
oath: All for the revolution, all through the revolution. But we
take them over at the same time with the firm purpose to oppose
immovably all who would convert the revolution of the people
into terror by a minority."

The _Vollzugsrat_ elected to fill the three vacancies: Gustav Noske, still governor of Kiel: Herr Wissell, a member of the old Reichstag, and Herr Loebe, editor of the Socialist _Volkswacht_ of Breslau. Loebe, however, never assumed office, and the cabinet consisted of five members until it was abolished by act of the National Assembly in February.

The Majority Socialists staged a big demonstration on Sunday, December 29th, in favor of the new government. Thousands of the _bourgeoisie_ joined in a great parade, which ended with a tremendous assembly in front of the government offices in the Wilhelmstrasse. The size and character of the demonstration showed that the great majority of Berlin's law-abiding residents were on the side of Ebert and his colleagues.

The Majority Socialists did not take over the sole responsibility for the government with a light heart. They had begun to realize something of the character of the forces working against them and were saddened because they had been compelled to abandon party traditions by relying upon armed force. Yet there was clearly no way of avoiding it. The Spartacans were organizing their cohorts in Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel and other cities, and had already seized the government of Duesseldorf, where they had dissolved the city council and arrested Mayor Oehler. The Soviets of Solingen and Remscheid had accepted the Spartacan program by a heavy majority. The state government of Brunswick had adopted resolutions declaring that the National Assembly could not be permitted to meet. At a meeting of the Munich Communists Emil Muehsam[59] had been greeted with applause when he declared that the summons for the assembly was "the common battle-cry of reaction." Resolutions were passed favoring the nullification of all war-loans.[60]

[59] Muehsam was one of the characteristic types of Bolsheviki.
For years he had been an unwashed, unshorn and unshaven
literary loafer in Berlin cafes, whose chief ability
consisted in securing a following of naive persons willing to
buy drinks for him.

[60] The left wing of the Independent Socialist Party already
demanded nullification, and the whole party drifted so
rapidly leftward that a platform adopted by it in the first
week of the following March definitely demanded nullification.

The Spartacans (on December 30th) had reorganized as the "Communist Laborers' Party of Germany--Spartacus League." Radek-Sobelsohn, who had for some weeks been carrying on his Bolshevik propaganda from various hiding places, attended the meeting and made a speech in which he declared that the Spartacans must not let themselves be frightened by the fear of civil war. Rosa Luxemburg openly summoned her hearers to battle.

The authority of the national government was small in any event, and was openly flouted and opposed in some places. Sailors and marines had organized the Republic of Oldenburg-East Frisia and elected an unlettered sailor named Bernhard Kuhnt as president. The president of the Republic of Brunswick was a bushelman tailor named Leo Merges, and the minister of education was a woman who had been a charwoman and had been discharged by a woman's club for which she had worked for petty peculations. Kurt Eisner, minister-president of Bavaria, was a dreamy, long-haired Communist writer who had earlier had to leave the editorial staff of _Vorwaerts_ because of an utter lack of practical common-sense. He was a fair poet and an excellent feuilletonist, but quite unfitted to participate in governmental affairs. His opposition to the national government severely handicapped it, and the Bavarian state government was at the same time crippled by the natural antagonism of a predominantly Catholic people to a Jewish president.

To the south the Czechs had occupied Bodenbach and Tetschen in German Bohemia, and were threatening the border. To the east the Poles, unwilling to await the awards of the peace conference, had seized the city of Posen, were taxing the German residents there for the maintenance of an army to be used against their own government, and had given notice that a war loan was to be issued. Paderewski, head of the new Polish Government, had been permitted to land at Danzig on the promise that he would proceed directly to Warsaw. Instead, he went to Posen and made inflammatory speeches against the Germans until the English officer accompanying him was directed by the British Government to see that the terms of the promise to the German government were obeyed. The German Government, endeavoring to assemble and transport sufficient forces to repel Polish aggressions against German territory, found opposition among the Spartacans and Independent Socialists at home, and from the Bolshevik Brunswick authorities, who announced that no government troops would be permitted to pass through the state, or to be recruited there. Government troops entering Brunswick were disarmed. The state government gave the Berlin cabinet notice that decrees of the Minister of War had no validity in Brunswick. General Scheuch, the Minister of War, resigned in disgust.

What later became an epidemic of strikes began. Seventy thousand workers were idle in Berlin. Upper Silesia reported serious labor troubles throughout the mining districts, due to Russian and German Bolshevist agitators and Poles.

A less happy New Year for men responsible for the affairs of a great state was doubtless never recorded.